Dr Mikhail Tyaglyy

Research project

Mykhaylo Tyaglyy has been working on the book about the fate of the Roma during the Nazi domination, particularly in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the areas under Wehrmacht control. The aim is to explore the evolution of the anti-Roma policies; to identify the central initiatives and to track them down; to examine the contribution of the local military, SS-Police and civil administrations to the process resulted in extermination of itinerant and settled Roma groups in most localities in 1942-1943, and to try to find out how the racially and ideologically based factors could have played crucial role in decision-making process, in combination with the reasons such as security, real or imagined participation of the Roma in resistance, etc. Besides, examination is necessary of the local administrations and police who contributed to the persecution.

The attitudes of the Ukrainian nationalist movement must be explored. During the wartime, the notion of a spy danger for nationalist guerrilla allegedly posed by nomadic Roma accrued, partially because of attempts by the Roma to find shelter in Soviet partisan units. Comparing to the local Servitka Roma, the nomadic Polska Roma attracted attention of the Ukrainian nationalists, as by the UPA they were associated with the Poles within the Volhynia massacre of 1943. These circumstances were reinforced by steady popular images depicting Roma basically as inferiors. This combination led to the use of lethal violence by some Ukrainian nationalist units primarily towards nomadic Roma, but sometimes also to the local Roma villagers.       

The victims’ survival strategies, responses to persecution and interactions with the non-Roma are still understudied. There was a variety of the Roma ethnic subgroups, each with its own cultural profile, let alone the number of those moved to settled way of life. Their survival strategies could also vary. In scholarly literature several definitions of resistance can be found. It is possibly to adjust such concepts to the Roma genocide case only taking into account important specificities. One cannot expect equal reactions to the persecution from different groups; each one can only use the ways determined by its own profile.    

Traumas that the Roma experienced undoubtedly impacted them in the postwar time. Roma do keep the memories of the persecution. However, this knowledge for decades was remaining in the realm of their own “communicative memory” having no way out to wider audience and getting no means to become an integral part of the wider “cultural memory”. Only recently, Roma in Ukraine have started to realize the important role that history can play. Similar can be noted about the wider society, which failed to learn about the persecutions of the Roma and to make a historical lesson out of it. The ways the Roma genocide was and still is perceived both in Roma community as well as in the wider Ukrainian society is to be examined.

Main areas of research

• National-Socialist persecution of the European Roma
• Romani studies
• Holocaust studies
• Memory studies
• Oral history studies

Positions and memberships

• Research associate at the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies
• Member of the Austrian-Ukrainian Historical Commission
• Associate member of the European Academic Network on Romani Studies